There Will Be Consequences

"If we do not act now, there will be no status Indians left to maintain our communities and culture into the future.
"It's supposed to be nation to nation. What we're going to do is show you how to be a respectful partner... If they refuse, that's their choice, but there will be consequences."
Professor Pamela Palmater, chair, centre for indigenous governance, Ryerson University, Toronto, Idle No More spokeswoman 

Canada and Canadians have a choice, according to Professor Palmater, the aboriginal academic equivalent of Chief Theresa Spence. We must act at all times with due deference to those who preceded us on this land, this geography we call Canada and which Professor Palmater and the Grand Chiefs of First Nations call their own, criminally wrested from their ancestors under false pretenses.

First Nations agreed only to allow the intruders to settle on part of the land that they insisted belonged to their community, as a good-will gesture. In return for which their ownership of the land, their entitlement to all it represented, from resources to fresh air, running water, and the sun that shone upon it, was guaranteed in perpetuity.

Oh, of course there was rent to be charged, and that took the form of ongoing-and-forever financial support of the traditional way of life of the aboriginal populations; housing, health care, education, upkeep and the wherewithal to supplement life's necessities where employment was absent and the traditional way of life no longer sustainable.

And while the funding was constant, also constant was the insistence that the federal government which supplied the funding through taxation, paid respect to a 'hands-off' policy when it came to governance, which would be the sole administrative responsibility of the Nation Chief and the Grand Chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations. And oh, of course, reserve Chiefs and band councils. 

Failure to recognize that limitless obligation meant there would be consequences. There are always consequences, implied, threatened and acted upon. Aside from those physical manifestation of what occurs when things do not go as required, there is the twisting of the sharp-edged complaints, and the emotions of guilt-induced colonialist angst, a pathology First Nations have become adept at spinning.

Consequences threaten stability. They appear as brave and stalwart warriors hearking back to the days of yore when bloody whooping wars were fought; Indian bands against one another, Indian bands allied with the French, the English, the Americans, prosecuting wars that would benefit one or the other. Currently, they take the guise of setting up pugnacious roadblocks to disrupt the flow of traffic and commerce.

Other, more dire consequences are not merely implied but promised; that the economic life-blood of the country will be impacted by the collective and determined action of First Nations 'protests', and approaches made to convince potential investors in Canadian enterprises like ore, energy and mineral extraction management to give Canada a wide berth, as a result of promised destabilization.

Moreover, First Nations have other tricks up their buckskin, embroidered sleeves. They will travel internationally. To the United Nations, to portray Canada as a racist, apartheid state. To Iran, to an effusive welcome by the Ayatollahs eager to hear all the dirty details of discrimination suffered by Canadian First Nations people, so a gloating Iran, the world's most egregious human-rights offender can stentoriously upbraid Canada on the world stage.

"The word 'nation' gets played with in the same way the word 'genocide' does. We have two guilty parties on that [originalism] front in Canada. We have the Supreme Court of Canada, which says that aboriginal rights are only those things which were integral to the distinctive culture of aboriginal peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans... And then we also have some indigenous people who will make a similar kind of originalist claim, that we were here before others came, we had this governance and resources, and we have to return to that moment.
"Politics is never final."
Professor John Borrows, chair of law, public policy and society at University of Minnesota, expert on Canadian indigenous governance

Politics may never be 'final', but history tells us that there is nothing unusual in migration of human settlements; people arriving from abroad to a geography previously settled by a population of less economically advanced people surrendering in time to the inevitability of sharing their geography with others who through sheer force of numbers and a dominating culture become the governors of the land. The original inhabitants usually become absorbed by the dominant culture.

That modern people no longer subscribe to what was once both process and inevitable, is simply an indication of a more elevated, enlightened culture of empathy for those who feel unfairly dealt with by fate and human intervention. Flailing against the inevitable and struggling to forestall it by whatever means feasible, does not always spell success; it arrests the inevitable by some considerable degree. Cultures usually blend, people integrate over a long period of time.

Maintaining an overlaid culture of victimhood and injured sensibilities does no one any good.  The concept of dealing 'nation' to 'nation' may succeed in mollifying the hurt sensibilities of the less powerful of the two populations, but it is a wishful fiction. Unless one accepts a nation within a nation, and it's been done with a different and other population that considers itself one of the 'two
founding' groups of Canadian nationhood, exclusive of First Nations.

"Our genocide, even if we accept that it's historical and ended technically with the residential schools, there's been no adequate reparations. There's been no reparations at all, really. The individuals themselves have been compensated to some degree, but when it comes down to it, the collectivities, the communities that were affected in terms of their ability to sustain themselves into the future, are not being provided with any kind of adequate redress."
Professor Taiaiake Alfred, professor of indigenous governance, University of Victoria

There has been redress. There have been lengthy and consistent attempts at redress. The continual and ongoing infusion of hefty sums in support of the aboriginal way of life is one of the more notable systems of redress, addressing the wish of aboriginals to respect their traditions. In which instance they partially enter modernity with the use of electronic devices and less nutritional foods, while remaining unemployed, living off tax dollars.

And there are the rueful and official apologies to First Nations for the past historical wrongs imposed upon them by a well-meaning society and its governments, hoping to speed inclusion and integration, in the process harming and insulting aboriginal traditions and individuals. There is no compensation, however, adequate to the task of undoing what has been done.

The sometimes incoherent, inchoate demands of First Nations toward the greater Canadian population on the thesis that First Nations are not Canadians but First Nations peoples, period, does no one any good, furthers no worthwhile agenda, but simply serves to ensure that antagonism and bitterness continues. There must be an end to it.

Canada finds itself in the same intractable situation that Israel does, with the Palestinians living on international financial handouts, forever aggrieved at their loss of 'their land' which was, ironically enough, not their land at all, but that of Jews who were forced from the land. See any parallels here?